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Research
Ongoing research projects that
I am involved in, each of them at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of
the
University of Helsinki, Finland:
New
innovations for environmental enrichment on pig farms. Funded
by the Ministry of Agriculture in Finland, we aim at
developing
cost-effective solutions for improving living conditions of pigs and
reducing abnormal behaviours such as tail biting.
The effect of early enrichment on the behaviour of
piglets and pigs.
We are testing whether providing piglets during their first weeks
of life with material to chew on and root in will have a lasting effect
in reducing later tail
biting and other harmful behaviours. The project is part
of a Nordic research programme on tail
biting in pigs.
Interaction between the sow and piglets.
We are testing whether providing piglets with chewing and rooting
materials as above reduces teat wounds and other piglet-induced
lesions in the mother sow.
Vetformula:
a cross-disciplinary project between pharmaceutics and ethology, in
which we aim at developing new ways for to make oral medication more
acceptable to cats.
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Science
meets working elephants in Asia
Working
Elephant
Programme
of Asia (WEPA) is a non-profit organization
providing courses and tutoring in
science-based, animal-friendly methods of elephant training and
management for those professionally involved with working elephants in
Asia.
The reason why I initiated this programme was to constructively give an
alternative to the existing
methods, which
were developed before modern animal behaviour science was available and
thus involve components in which elephants are subjected to pain and
injury during training
and handling.
The new methods have been rapidly embraced in Nepal, the first country
we are working in. Local professionals appreciate the faster learning
rate and better obedience of elephants achieved by the new methods.
Occupational safety has also improved, as there are no more indicences
of panic by the elephant in training. The results have attracted
interest in other Asian countries, and in the future we aim at being
able to provide assistance in other countries of the elephant range in
Asia, such as India and Thailand.
The Nepal project has mainly been funded by the Finnish and Nepali
offices of the conservation organization WWF, and by the World Society
for the Protection of Animals, WSPA. Part of the funding comes from
private donors.
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Contact
details
Research Centre for Animal Welfare
Department of Production Animal Medicine
P.O. Box 57
00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
+358 50 544 5840
Books
and science journalism
For the wider audience, I
occasionally
write popular science articles and non-fiction books on animals and
nature conservation. Most of my writing has been in the Finnish
language; those who can read it may like to take a look at a selection
of previously published stories in Finnish.
There is one English-language book, though: The Baltic Sea: Discovering the sea
of life, about biodiversity and conservation of the
Baltic Sea, available online via the above link.
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